In the arms race to implement (and avoid) censorship, David has a new tool against Goliath. It’s called Genetic Evasion, or Geneva for short.

Censoring regimes and authoritarian governments are continually developing new and sophisticated online means to implement their censorship laws. However, manual methods of circumventing censorship have been slow and ineffectual. But the AI-based Geneva tool will change the balance in favor of the researchers and protesters.

Geneva and censorship

Computer scientists at the University of Maryland (UMD) have developed an artificial intelligence-based tool called Genetic Evasion (Geneva), which teaches itself how to avoid censorship.

“Geneva represents the first step toward a whole new arms race in which artificial intelligence systems of censors and evaders compete with one another,” said Dave Levin. He is an author of the paper and assistant professor of computer science at UMD.

“Ultimately, winning this race means bringing free speech and open communication to millions of users around the world who currently don’t have them.”

The researchers tested Geneva in the lab and China, India, and Kazakhstan. amazingly, the tool found dozens of ways to circumvent censorship by exploiting gaps in censors’ logic and finding bugs. These would have been impossible for humans to find.

Putting Geneva through its paces

The scientists ran Geneva in the lab with mock censors used by governments in the past. Within days, Geneva identified virtually all the packet-manipulation strategies of these censors.

Geneva was also successful in China, where the user was able to browse the internet free of censorship. Moreover, Geneva was able to evade censorship successfully in Kazakhstan, which eavesdropped on social media sites. In India, too, which blocked URLs, Geneva allowed users to browse unhindered.

The scientists are exploring ways and means to deploy Geneva on the server-side (for example, on Wikipedia or the BBC). These sites would then be available to people inside countries that censor them without having to install them on the local computer.

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